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As Predicted, Obamacare Is Absolutely Killing The Middle Class

August 21, 2016August 21, 2016 by Michael

The critics of Obamacare have been proven right. The Obama administration promised that health insurance premiums would go down. Instead, they have absolutely skyrocketed. The Obama administration promised that Obamacare would not kill jobs. Instead, firms are hiring fewer workers because of suffocating health care costs. As you will see below, even the Federal Reserve is admitting this. The Obama administration also promised that the big health insurance companies would love the new Obamacare plans and would eagerly compete with one another to win customers in the new health insurance marketplaces. Instead, many of the big health insurance companies are now dropping Obamacare plans altogether.

We witnessed the latest stunning example of this phenomenon just a few days ago. It turns out that Aetna has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars on plans sold through the health exchanges, and now they plan to pull out of the program almost entirely…

Earlier this week, Aetna, which covers about 900,000 people through the health exchanges created under Obamacare, announced that it would dramatically reduce its presence those exchanges. Instead of expanding into five new states this year, as the insurer had previously planned, the company said that it would drop out of 11 of the 15 states in which it currently sells under the law.

Aetna’s decision follows similar moves from other insurers: UnitedHealth announced in April that it would cease selling plans on most exchanges. Shortly after, Humana pulled out of two states, Virginia and Alabama. More than a dozen of the nonprofit health insurance cooperatives set up under the law—health insurance carriers created using government-back loans in order to spur competition—have failed entirely. While some insurers are entering the exchanges, even more are leaving.

Another one of “the big five”, UnitedHealth, is going to lose more than half a billion dollars on Obamacare plans. So just a few months ago they also announced that they would be dramatically scaling back their participation in the program.

Because of the ridiculous costs, health insurance companies are either going to have to abandon the exchanges completely or they will have to raise rates substantially.

Needless to say, the people that are going to ultimately feel the pain from all of this are consumers…

Customers who are now forced to obtain insurance or pay a hefty fine that grows more costly over time are being left in a difficult position. Americans are essentially stuck between a rock and hard place, either losing coverage entirely, or having to cough up money for a plan they can’t afford.

“Something has to give,” said Larry Levitt, a healthcare law expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Either insurers will drop out or insurers will raise premiums.“

On the low end of the spectrum, tens of millions of poor Americans benefit from government programs that provide health care at little or no cost.

On the other end of the spectrum, the very wealthy can afford to pay the ridiculously high health insurance premiums that we are seeing under Obamacare.

So what this means is that the people that are being hurt the most by Obamacare are those that belong to the middle class.

As I mentioned above, employers are now hiring less workers because of Obamacare, and that is very bad news for the middle class. One recent study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York discovered that nearly one out of every five firms is “employing fewer workers” because of this insidious law…

According to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 20.9% of manufacturing firms in the state said they were employing fewer workers because of the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law known as Obamacare, while 16.8% of respondents in the service sector said the same.

And middle class Americans that have to pay for their own health insurance are being hit with much higher bills these days. According to one recent study, it is being projected that the average Obamacare premium will go up 24 percent in 2016…

Now, courtesy of a new study by independent analyst Charles Gaba – who has crunched the numbers for insurers participating in the ACA exchanges in all 50 states – we can also calculate what the average Obamacare premium increase across the entire US will be: using proposed and approved rate increase requests, the average Obamacare premium is expected to surge by a whopping 24% this year.

Even NBC News, which is about as pro-Obama as you can get, is reporting on the crippling premium increases that are devastating the middle class…

Millions of people who pay the full cost of their health insurance will face the sting of rising premiums next year, with no financial help from government subsidies.

Renewal notices bearing the bad news will go out this fall, just as the presidential election is in the home stretch.

“I don’t know if I could swallow another 30 or 40 percent without severely cutting into other things I’m trying to do, like retirement savings or reducing debt,” said Bob Byrnes, of Blaine, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb. His monthly premium of $524 is already about 50 percent more than he was paying in 2015, and he has a higher deductible.

All over the nation people are getting hit like this.

Personally, my health insurance company wanted to nearly double the rate I was paying when Obamacare fully kicked in. So I searched around and found another plan that was only about a 30 percent increase, but at least it wasn’t nearly double what I had been paying before.

But when the time came to renew that plan, they wanted to jump my premium up another 50 percent per month.

Those of us that are in the middle are being crushed by Obamacare. We aren’t poor enough to qualify for government assistance, and we aren’t wealthy enough for these ridiculous health insurance premiums not to matter.

Just about everything that Barack Obama promised us about Obamacare has turned out to be a lie.

So where in the accountability?

This is one of the big reasons why nearly one out of every five U.S. adults lives with their parents or their grandparents these days. Many young adults cannot afford the basics of life such as health insurance, and so they have got to find a way to cut back expenses somewhere. If that means moving back in with Mom and Dad, that is what some of them are going to do.

I am astounded that our system of health care has become so messed up. But this is just more evidence of how our society is falling apart in thousands of different ways, and I am not optimistic that things will be turned around any time soon.

Are Trolls Turning The Internet Into A Festival Of Hate?

August 18, 2016August 18, 2016 by Michael

Have you noticed that people say some of the most hateful things imaginable on the Internet? Earlier today, I came across a Time Magazine article entitled “How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet“, and it made me reflect on my own experience as the publisher of a number of prominent websites. Over the years, I have often gotten to see what is really going on in some of the darkest hearts in our society. There are people that come to my websites that somehow think that making crude sexual remarks about the wives and children of people that they have never met is perfectly acceptable behavior. There are others that say incredibly vile things about people that have a different skin color than they do, and some people have a hatred for Christians and the Christian faith that is absolutely frightening. I can’t understand why anyone would want to be like that, but apparently this kind of behavior is very widespread. In fact, one Pew Research Center survey discovered that 70 percent of all 18-to-24-year-olds who use the Internet have experienced harassment at some point.

Sadly, the truth is that the relative anonymity of the Internet allows people to reveal what is really in their hearts. For some people, the Internet magnifies the kindness and goodness that is in their hearts, but for others it does the exact opposite. From the safety of their own homes, they endlessly spew speech that is so abusive that it is hard to imagine that the person spewing it is actually human.

These people are commonly known as “trolls”, and the following is how the Time Magazine article that I mentioned above describes these trolls…

Psychologists call this the online disinhibition effect, in which factors like anonymity, invisibility, a lack of authority and not communicating in real time strip away the mores society spent millennia building. And it’s seeping from our smartphones into every aspect of our lives.

The people who relish this online freedom are called trolls, a term that originally came from a fishing method online thieves use to find victims. It quickly morphed to refer to the monsters who hide in darkness and threaten people. Internet trolls have a manifesto of sorts, which states they are doing it for the “lulz,” or laughs. What trolls do for the lulz ranges from clever pranks to harassment to violent threats.

Whatever happened to treating other people the way that you would like to be treated?

When did the Golden Rule go out of style?

As our society becomes more evil, hearts all over the country are growing cold, and one of the results is that the Internet is being transformed into a festival of hatred. The same Time Magazine article detailed some particularly disturbing examples of troll hate…

They’ve been steadily upping their game. In 2011, trolls descended on Facebook memorial pages of recently deceased users to mock their deaths. In 2012, after feminist Anita Sarkeesian started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a series of YouTube videos chronicling misogyny in video games, she received bomb threats at speaking engagements, doxxing threats, rape threats and an unwanted starring role in a video game called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian. In June of this year, Jonathan Weisman, the deputy Washington editor of the New York Times, quit Twitter, on which he had nearly 35,000 followers, after a barrage of anti-Semitic messages. At the end of July, feminist writer Jessica Valenti said she was leaving social media after receiving a rape threat against her daughter, who is 5 years old.

On a very basic level, the Internet allows people to reveal who they really are. Unfortunately, we are finding out that a lot of us are truly vile human beings. Some time ago, a team of Canadian researchers did some research on Internet trolls, and what they found out was quite alarming…

They conducted two online studies with over 1,200 people, giving personality tests to each subject along with a survey about their Internet commenting behavior. They were looking for evidence that linked trolling with the “Dark Tetrad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism.

They found that Dark Tetrad scores were highest among people who said trolling was their favorite Internet activity.

It should be no surprise that our society is crawling with narcissists, psychopaths and sadists. For decades we have been pushing God out of every corner of public life, and as a result we have seen a moral decline that is absolutely unprecedented in our history.

So what can be done?

Is there a way that the trolls can be stopped?

Some big websites have stepped up their efforts to ban people that are advocating hatred and violence. For instance, the New York Times says that Twitter just suspended 235,000 accounts “that promoted terrorism”…

Twitter suspended 235,000 accounts that promoted terrorism over the last six months, as part of a continuing effort to keep people from using the social network for extremist causes, the company said Thursday.

“The world has witnessed a further wave of deadly, abhorrent terror attacks across the globe,” Twitter said in a statement. “We strongly condemn these acts and remain committed to eliminating the promotion of violence or terrorism on our platform.”

And I definitely applaud Twitter for that.

But where does the censorship stop? All too often, the definition of “extremists” goes far beyond violent terrorists.

Just consider what is happening during this campaign season. Virtually all of the big tech companies have engaged in some form of “pro-Trump censorship”, and this was brilliantly detailed in a recent piece by Liz Crokin. The following is a short excerpt…

I began looking into how strong the bias and censorship runs in these forums after I did an interview on the pro-Trump podcast, MAGAPod. The show’s host, Mark Hammond, was disappointed Apple wouldn’t run his show without an “explicit” warning. Hammond’s podcast didn’t contain content that would be deemed explicit under Apple’s policy, and most other shows in the News & Politics category aren’t labeled as such.

On June 18, Hammond talked to Sandra, a representative from Apple. She explained that, since the description of his show is pro-Trump, his show is explicit in nature—because the subject matter is Donald Trump. So, an Apple employee concluded the Republican presidential candidate is explicit.

iTunes has dozens of podcasts discussing Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler—none of which is marked explicit.

And of course it probably won’t surprise you to learn that Apple CEO Tim Cook is a huge Hillary Clinton supporter and recently hosted a $50,000 per plate fundraiser for her campaign.

So where do we draw the line?

On my websites, I try to let everyone have their say as much as possible. I very much believe in the “marketplace of ideas”, and I very much believe that the interaction between light and darkness can produce some extraordinary results.

But that also means that I often allow people to say things that I find highly offensive.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do know that the problem is growing. As our society continues to come apart at the seams, the hatred on the Internet will continue to increase.

The Internet is used for all sorts of horrible things, but it can also be used to do great things as well. As the darkness rises, I would encourage all of us to choose to be lights.

In a world filled with hate, love is desperately needed.

So instead of responding to hate with even more hate, let us seek to become people of great faith, great hope and great love.

Overwhelmed By Debt, Nearly 1 In 5 Young Adults Live With Their Parents Or Grandparents

August 16, 2016August 16, 2016 by Michael

In America today, more than 60 million people live in multi-generational households. That number is so large that it may seem difficult to believe, but the truth is that vast numbers of young adults have had to move back in with their parents and grandparents in recent years due to the deteriorating economy. Millions of our young people cannot find decent jobs once they leave school, and millions of them are absolutely overwhelmed by debt. Of course some of them are just lazy, but whatever the reason it is undeniable that multi-generational households are on the rise. According to the Pew Research Center, 12 percent of the U.S. population was living in multi-generational households back in 1980. Today, that number is up to 19 percent. That means nearly one out of every five U.S. adults now live with their parents or their grandparents.

One of the big culprits, of course, is student loan debt.

According to CNN, approximately 70 percent of all college graduates will have student loan debt to pay off once they leave school, and the average loan balance for those graduates is about $28,950.

But there are many that run up $50,000 or $100,000 in debt at high end schools. We encourage our young people to apply to the “best schools” that they possibly can, and we tell them that they shouldn’t worry about how much it will cost. We assure them that they will be able to easily pay back any debts once they leave college because of the “good jobs” that they will get upon graduation.

Unfortunately, millions upon millions of our young people have discovered that the good jobs that they were promised simply do not exist.

We are also seeing other forms of debt rise to frightening levels in this nation. The following comes from the New York Times…

Over all, Americans’ use of credit cards has recently been creeping up again: Household debt in the United States increased by $35 billion, to $12.29 trillion, during the second quarter of 2016, a 0.3 percent rise from the previous quarter that was driven by credit cards and auto loans, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

We often criticize the federal government for being 19.4 trillion dollars in debt, and rightly so, but let us not forget that U.S. households are 12.2 trillion dollars in debt.

We are a society that feels entitled to everything, and we are not afraid to go into debt to get it. And unfortunately we have passed on this “entitlement mentality” to the next generation.

In a recent blog post, Jenna Abrams did an amazing job of describing the crisis that we are facing with our young adults today. Here is an excerpt…

Today I asked my followers how would they describe Millennials and this is what I got: “lazy”, “thin-skinned”, “spoiled”, “selfish”, “undisciplined”, “self-absorbed”, ”fragile”, “oblivious”, etc. and I can agree on this. This generation is really what you call it. But there was one description that is the most accurate. “Raised by neglectful, over-compensating for inadequacy, self-serving parents.”

You’re in charge. You insisted your children and grandchildren have to get higher education instead of taking a blue-collar job or just entering the workforce after school like your generation did. Most of you pay for that (often unnecessary) higher education. You are overprotective and prevent your children from playing outside and making mistakes you had a chance to make to gain that thick skin. You don’t let your 12-year-old kid stay at home alone because they are too young. And who is wrong when your child has a conflict at school? I bet you always blame the other side, not your “special snowflake”. And how you get surprised that the whole generation gets offended by facing the truth: they are not special. It must hurt, right?

This generation of young adults is the most “educated” in our history, and yet they also appear to be one of the least competent. Just check out these numbers from CBS News…

Half of American Millennials score below the minimum standard of literacy proficiency. Only two countries scored worse by that measure: Italy (60 percent) and Spain (59 percent). The results were even worse for numeracy, with almost two-thirds of American Millennials failing to meet the minimum standard for understanding and working with numbers. That placed U.S. Millennials dead last for numeracy among the study’s 22 developed countries.

In the old days, our institutions of higher learning had exceedingly high standards and they demanded the best from students. Today, our system of higher education is a joke, and many of our best colleges are more focused on political correctness and “safe spaces” than they are on preparing our young people for the harsh realities of the real world…

At Brown University – like Harvard, one of the eight elite Ivy League universities – the New York Times reported students set up a “safe space” that offered calming music, cookies, Play-Doh and a video of frolicking puppies to help students cope with a discussion on how colleges should handle sexual assault.

A Harvard student described in the university newspaper attending a “safe space” complete with “massage circles” that was designed to help students have open conversations.

We have raised a generation of overly-coddled, self-absorbed boys and girls that have never learned how to become men and women. They don’t understand how things really work, and they are completely and utterly unprepared for the exceedingly difficult times that are coming.

And since our education system is completely and totally dominated by progressives, our young people have had decades of liberal propaganda pumped into their skulls, and the results are absolutely frightening.

For example, one survey discovered that 62 percent of Millennials say that they are “liberal”, and 42 percent of them say that they are “socialists”.

A different survey discovered that more than half of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 say that they reject capitalism.

If the coming election were to be determined by the Millennials, Hillary Clinton would win by one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history. But of course she wouldn’t have even been the nominee for the Democrats, because Bernie Sanders would have crushed Clinton.

If something is not done, this is what the future of America is going to look like.

I don’t know about you, but to me that is a rather distressing thought.

Violence Erupts In America’s Heartland As Milwaukee Becomes The Latest U.S. City To Burn

August 14, 2016August 14, 2016 by Michael

The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin exploded in violence last night as the wave of chaos and civil unrest that is sweeping across America continues to intensify. At this point, many of our largest cities have become powder kegs of anger and frustration, and a full-blown riot can be set off with a single bullet. In this case, an armed suspect was shot and killed by Milwaukee police as he attempted to evade the police, and his death almost instantly set off pandemonium in the heart of the city. America is being ripped apart, and much more violence is coming. Decades of social decay and economic decline have fundamentally transformed many of our greatest cities, and tensions that have been simmering for a very long time are now being brought to a boil. Sadly, it seems quite likely that we will see even more rage, hatred and divisiveness in the months ahead.

The sudden eruption of violence that we witnessed in Milwaukee last night was absolutely stunning. Within just hours after the shooting of the armed suspect, fires were burning all over the city…

Protesters clashed with officers in the hours after a Milwaukee police officer shot and killed an armed suspect during a foot chase. After an hours-long confrontation with officers, police reported that a gas station was set on fire. Police said firefighters initially could not get close to the blaze because of gunshots.

Later, fires were started at a bank branch, a beauty supply company and an auto parts store as scores of people gathered near the crime scene on the city’s north side, a grim Mayor Tom Barrett said at a news conference Saturday night. He said the unrest was driven by a social media frenzy urging people to gather in the area.

Of course police were one of the primary targets of the violence. It is being reported that at least one squad car was set ablaze, and another had a brick thrown through a window.

One prominent Milwaukee city official is blaming racial injustice for the violence. The following comes from CNN…

City Alderman Khalif Rainey said the area has been a “powder keg” for potential violence throughout the summer.

“What happened tonight may not have been right and I am not justifying that but no one can deny the fact that there are problems, racial problems in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that need to be rectified,” Rainey said. “This community of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has become the worst place to live for African Americans in the entire country.”

Rainey said Saturday’s violence was a byproduct of inequities, injustice, unemployment and under-education.

“Something has to be done to address these issues,” he said. “The black people of Milwaukee are tired, they are tired of living under this oppression, this is their life.”

Without a doubt, the suffering that is going on in our inner cities is intense. Our economic infrastructure has been gutted by decades of bad trade deals, and evidence of severe social and moral decay is all around us.

But no matter how bad things are, there is never any excuse for committing random acts of violence. In addition to setting businesses on fire, it is being reported that rioters were trying to drag people out of their vehicles in order to beat them up.

How in the world does that solve anything?

Meanwhile, police all over the nation continue to be targets of violence. In a previous article, I told my readers that the number of police officers that have been shot and killed this year has risen by 78 percent compared to last year.

Well, over the past few days some more officers have been added to the list. For example, the following is an excerpt from a CNN report about an officer that was just shot and killed in south Georgia…

A police officer was shot dead while responding to a call of a suspicious person in south Georgia, authorities said.

The shooting occurred Saturday night after the officer, Tim Smith, got the call in a residential area in Eastman, special agent Scott Whitley of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations said.

While on patrol, Smith encountered the subject and exited his car. That’s when he was fatally shot, Whitley said.

And this is from a Fox News report about an officer that was shot and killed in New Mexico…

Two Ohio fugitives wanted for a murder have been arrested after authorities say one of them fatally shot a New Mexico police officer.

Dona Ana County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Kelly Jameson said Saturday that 38-year-old Jesse Hanes is suspected of gunning down Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez during a traffic stop Friday.

In addition, there was another very disturbing incident that just happened a few days ago in Arkansas. When a suspect started shooting at police officers, one was killed, one was wounded, and a police dog named Kina that got hit and ran away was just found on Saturday…

Police spokeswoman Kristin Faulkenberry told reporters the dog, named Kina, “was up and walking” when searchers found the animal Friday morning near where the shooting unfolded near Hackett, about 115 miles west of Little Rock.

The dog was shot and ran into a wooded area Wednesday when a man identified as Billy Monroe Jones opened fire on officers, killing Sebastian County Deputy Bill Cooper and wounding Hackett Police Chief Darrell Spells.

Earlier today I talked to a friend of mine that works as a police officer, and he admitted that he and his wife do think about all of this violence that is being directed at the police. I suppose that it would be exceedingly difficult not to. Those that are serving their communities in this way are going to have a very tough time moving forward. At this point every single law enforcement officer in the entire nation is a potential target, and they are just going to have to find a way to deal with this new reality.

America is more divided than I have ever seen in my entire lifetime. Instead of learning how to love one another, hatred is growing by the day.

More chaos is coming, more violence is coming, and more of our cities will burn.

Things didn’t have to turn out this way, but thanks to decades of incredibly foolish decisions we will now reap what we have sown.

If Our Mayors Are THIS Corrupt, What Is The Rest Of The Population Like Behind Closed Doors?

August 8, 2016August 8, 2016 by Michael

It isn’t just the politicians in Washington D.C. that are deeply corrupt. In this article you will read about two prominent mayors that have engaged in absolutely horrific behavior, and you will read about a sex scandal out in California that involved 24 different police officers sleeping with the same prostitute. The reason why I write about these things is not to gross you out. Instead, the goal is to get America to take a long look in the mirror. Ultimately, we aren’t going to turn this country around by electing the right president, because the truth is that the biggest problem with this nation is in our own hearts. Until we get our hearts right, nothing is going to really change.

When I was growing up, mayors were people that you looked up to and respected. But these days many of them appear to be sex-fueled maniacs. Just consider the case of Fairfax, Virginia mayor R. Scott Silverthorne. If you are not familiar with Fairfax, it is an upscale D.C. suburb that is only about 20 miles away from the White House. Silverthorne was serving his third-term as mayor, and most people thought he was a good guy until it was discovered that he was trading meth for group sex with men…

The mayor of Fairfax, Virginia, is resigning following his arrest for allegedly attempting to trade methamphetamine for a group sex session with men he met online.

City officials said in a news release Monday that R. Scott Silverthorne’s resignation will take effect at noon Thursday.

Silverthorne was arrested last Thursday on a felony drug distribution charge.

Following his arrest, Silverthorne was also fired from his job as a substitute teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools.

In case you don’t already know, the Washington D.C. area is one of the hotbeds for gay culture in the entire country. In fact, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority runs extremely graphic gay hookup ads while at the same time absolutely refusing ads that promote the Christian faith.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Stockton, California has been arrested for playing strip poker with boys and girls at a disadvantaged children’s camp…

A California mayor has been accused of playing strip poker with six members of a disadvantaged children’s camp after plying them with alcohol.

Anthony Silva, 41, the mayor of Stockton, was arrested on Thursday morning after police say they found an audio recording of the poker game on his phone.

Investigators say Silva invited at least three girls and two or three boys into his bedroom at the camp in August last year before convincing them to strip off.

I think that the question I posed in the headline is quite legitimate – if this is how our mayors are behaving, what is the rest of the population doing behind closed doors?

Elsewhere in California, an 18-year-old prostitute is at the center of an almost unbelievable police sex scandal…

The 18-year-old girl goes by the name “Celeste Guap,” and admits she’s slept with two dozen officers from various police departments.

Guap told KPIX she had sex with 14 officers from Oakland Police Department, 5 from the Richmond Police Department, 3 Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies and one Livermore cop.

She says in exchange some officers gave her protection and tipped her off about undercover operations while she was working as a prostitute.

Reportedly, she first began to have sex with police officers when she was 16 years old, and they would pass her around like a trading card.

And these are the men that we are relying on to enforce the laws and to protect our families?

This is not a matter of just two or three police officers engaging in illicit behavior. We are talking about two dozen men that were brazenly betraying their communities and making a mockery of everything their police departments are supposed to stand for.

This is the kind of nation that we have become, and signs of our moral decay are everywhere.

For instance, we just learned that in 2015 more than 40 percent of all babies born in America were born to unmarried mothers for the eighth year in a row…

Of the 3,977,745 babies born in the United States of America in 2015, 1,600,208 of them—or 40.2 percent–were born to unmarried mothers, according to data released this month by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

That makes 2015 the eighth straight year that 40 percent or more of the babies born in the United States were born to unmarried mothers, according to CDC data.

But prior to 2008 this had never happened before in our entire history. And if you go all the way back to 1940, only 3.8 percent of all babies were born to unmarried women…

In 1940, 3.8 percent of the babies born in the United States were born to unmarried women. The percentage first went as high as 10 percent in 1969, when it was 10.0 percent. In 1983, it surpassed 20 percent for the first time, hitting 20.3 percent. In 1992, it exceeded 30 percent for the first time, hitting 30.1 percent.

At the same time, crime and violence continue to rise in this nation. Last month was the deadliest July in 10 years for the city of Chicago, and police officer shooting deaths for the country as a whole were up an astounding 78 percent during the first half of this year.

It is getting to the point where it is starting to become difficult to blame people that are afraid to leave their own homes. Our streets are becoming increasingly dangerous, and there are some very, very sick people out there. If you doubt this, just consider what just happened to a young and promising Google employee…

A Google employee from New York City who disappeared on an afternoon jog while visiting her mother in Massachusetts has been found murdered in the woods.

Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said Monday that 27-year-old Vanessa Marcotte was reported missing after failing to return from a run between 1pm and 4pm in Princeton.

Her body was discovered at around 8.20pm Sunday by a state police K9 unit near Brooks Station Road, about a half-mile from her mother’s home.

A source told Fox25 in Boston that investigators were examining the possibility that Marcotte was sexually assaulted and set on fire, with burns to her hands, head and feet.

How twisted and evil do you have to be to do something like this?

It is election season, and a lot of people out there truly believe that America will be turned around if we elect Donald Trump. Others are completely convinced that Hillary Clinton is the solution to what ails us.

But in the end, no election can fix what is wrong in our hearts, and that is the biggest problem facing this country.

Donald Trump Warns Americans To Get Out Of The Stock Market As The Dow Falls For A 7th Day In A Row

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016 by Michael

One thing that you have to appreciate about Donald Trump is that unlike most politicians, he actually says what is on his mind. On Tuesday, Trump told Fox Business that he had already gotten out of the stock market, and that he foresees “very scary scenarios” ahead for investors. And of course things have already started to get a bit ominous for those holding stocks over the last week and a half. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has now closed down for seven days in a row, and that is the longest losing streak that we have seen since the panic of last August. Over the past 12 months we have seen virtually every other major global stock market experience at least one major crash. Could the U.S. markets be next?

What Trump told Fox Business earlier today was actually right on the money. Our financial markets have been artificially inflated by the Federal Reserve, and all artificial bubbles of this nature eventually burst. The following comes from a Bloomberg article that was posted on Tuesday entitled “Trump Urges Exit From Market Boosted by ‘Artificially Low’ Rates“…

Donald Trump on Tuesday said interest rates set by the Federal Reserve are inflating the stock market and recommended 401(k)-holders to get out of equities, just like he did.

“I did invest and I got out, and it was actually very good timing,” the Republican presidential nominee said in a phone interview with Fox Business. “But I’ve never been a big investor in the stock market.”

“Interest rates are artificially low,” Trump said. “The only reason the stock market is where it is is because you get free money.”

Trump’s comments come at a time when we are getting a whole host of bad news about the U.S. economy. We just learned that U.S. GDP grew at a meager 1.2 percent annual rate during the second quarter, the rate of homeownership in the United States just hit an all-time record low, and corporate earnings have now been falling for five quarters in a row.

But perhaps most alarming of all is what is happening to the price of oil. As I discussed yesterday, the price of oil has plunged well over 20 percent since June 8th, and it was down again on Tuesday.

As I write this article, the price of U.S. oil is sitting at just $39.66. The psychologically-important 40 dollar barrier has been broken, but the price of oil doesn’t even have to go down another penny to do immense damage to the U.S. economy. If it just stays at this price, we are going to bleed more energy industry jobs, more energy companies are going to default on their debts, and more financial institutions that are exposed to the energy industry are going to get into serious trouble.

All the ingredients are there for a major financial crisis, and perhaps that explains why so many investors are flocking to precious metals such as gold and silver right now.

The price of gold has gone up for six trading days in a row, and silver is approaching 21 dollars an ounce.

Meanwhile, things continue to unravel on the other side of the planet. In Europe, let’s just say that the recent bank stress tests did not go as well as many were hoping…

If the goal of the EBA Stress Tests was to reassure investors and regain confidence that ‘all is well’ in Europe’s increasingly fragile and systemically interconnected banking system, then it has utterly failed. The broadest European bank stock index is now down 7% from the post-stress-test spike highs, Italian banks are at record lows and being halted (despite Renzi’s promises), Commerzbank is struggling with capital raise chatter, and Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse are tumbling after being booted from the Stoxx 50.

It is funny – every time I write a major article about Deutsche Bank, their stock goes to a new record low.

And it has just happened again. Less than a week ago, I posted this article, and on Tuesday Deutsche Bank plummeted to a brand new record low as renewed fears about the health of the bank spooked investors.

Problems at Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse are now becoming so obvious that even mainstream analysts are admitting that they are “causing some anxiety”…

“Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse … are dropping to where they were after the Brexit vote,” said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Baird. “That’s causing some anxiety.”

Deutsche and Credit Suisse’s U.S.-listed shares closed down 3.75 percent and 4.67 percent, respectively.

In Europe nobody is waiting for financial stocks to crash, because they are already crashing.

A “too big to fail” crisis is rapidly unfolding across the entire continent, but most Americans are totally oblivious to what is going on over there. Instead, our major news outlets are feeding us an endless barrage of negative headlines about Donald Trump and a steady stream of positive headlines about Hillary Clinton.

I wonder who they want to win the election?

Of course I am being sarcastic. The days when the mainstream media at least pretended to be “independent” are long gone.

But as far as the stock market is concerned, I am quite confident that Donald Trump will be vindicated.

And if you don’t want to believe Donald Trump, I would encourage you to consider what Jeffrey Gundlach, the chief executive of DoubleLine Capital, has been saying. He has been right about the markets in recent years over and over again, and just a few days ago he publicly stated that “stocks should be down massively” and that now is the time to “sell everything“.

Unfortunately, very few people are likely to change course at this stage. Most of those that could see the warning signs have already gotten out of the market, and those that prefer to have blind faith in the system are not likely to listen to warnings from men like Trump and Gundlach.

So now it is just a waiting game.

We shall see if Trump and Gundlach are right, and those that end up on the correct side of the equation are probably going to make a boatload of money during the months ahead.

Terror Attacks And Mass Killings Are Becoming A Daily Event

July 26, 2016July 26, 2016 by Michael

Terror attacks and mass killings are happening so rapidly now that it is really difficult to keep up with them all. In fact, as you will see below, so far there have been several this week alone. This latest attack in France during which radical Islamic terrorists slit the throat of a Catholic priest was particularly disturbing. Just a few days ago I warned that churches in the western world would be targeted, and now it is happening. According to thereligionofpeace.com, there have been 1274 Islamic terror attacks in 2016. These attacks have been spread across 50 different nations, and as a result of these attacks more than 11,000 people have been killed and more than 14,000 people have been injured. When are we going to finally wake up and understand how serious this threat really is?

Very few people would have imagined that a sleepy Catholic church in France would be the target of an Islamic terror attack on Tuesday morning, but that is precisely what happened. The following description of the attack comes from the New York Times…

Mass was ending around 9:30 a.m. when two young men with knives burst in. They forced the auxiliary priest, the Rev. Jacques Hamel, 85, to kneel. When he resisted, they slit his throat. They held several worshipers and at least one nun hostage, while another nun escaped. Officers from a specialized police unit descended on the church. A short while later, officers shot the young men dead when they emerged from the church.

We have all seen images of ISIS slitting the throats of Christians in the Middle East, but now it is taking place in Europe.

As the terrorists emerged from the church, they reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” before being shot dead by the police.

ISIS has already taken responsibility for the attack and is referring to these two young men as “two soldiers of the Islamic State“. And France knew that one of them had tried to go to Syria to join ISIS twice, but still allowed him to roam free for at least part of the day…

One of a pair of ISIS knifemen who stormed a church in Normandy before slitting the throat of an elderly priest has been named as known terror threat Adel Kermiche.

The 19-year-old ‘ISIS soldier’ was being monitored with an electronic ankle tag after he was arrested for twice attempting to flee France to join the terror group in Syria.

Despite having been released early from prison, Keriche’s bail conditions allowed him to roam unsupervised between 8.30am and 12.30pm, leaving him free to murder the priest in the attack which was carried out between 9am and 11am.

This horrific attack in France came on the heels of a tremendous tragedy in Japan. Mass killings are fairly rare over there, and so virtually the entire Japanese nation is in shock at this point. The following comes from the Washington Post…

Early on Tuesday morning, a man identified as Satoshi Uematsu allegedly attacked a care home for disabled people in Sagamihara, about 35 miles west of Tokyo. Armed with three knives and tie cables, the assailant killed 19 people and wounded many before he drove to a police station and turned himself in.

And that mass killing in Japan came on the heels of a suicide bombing in Ansbach, Germany on Sunday…

The Syrian man who blew himself up outside a bar in Ansbach vowed the people of Germany “won’t be able to sleep peacefully anymore” in a video filmed before the attack.

Investigators said the suicide bomber, known only as Mohammad D., had declared loyalty to Islamic State in the recording – and announced “a revenge act against Germans because they are standing in the way of Islam”.

Further details have emerged about the 27-year-old, who injured 15 people – four of them seriously – when he detonated a backpack filled with explosives and shrapnel after being turned away from a music festival being attended by thousands of people.

Of course just prior to the suicide bombing in Ansbach, there were two other acts of terror in Germany that made headlines all over the globe…

The bombing has rattled the German public following a week of violence in southern Germany that began on July 18, when an immigrant teen, apparently also inspired by ISIS, stabbed passengers on a train in Wurzburg in Bavaria.

That was followed by a shooting spree Friday in which nine people were killed in the Bavarian state capital, Munich, before a Syrian asylum seeker killed a woman in Reutlingen, in the neighboring southern German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, on Sunday, hours ahead of the Ansbach attack.

Are you starting to get the point?

In the summer of 2016, it has been terror attack after terror attack and mass killing after mass killing.

And in this article I haven’t even mentioned Orlando, Dallas, Nice or Baton Rouge at all.

As I have written about extensively, we have entered a period of time when our world seems to be going crazy. The love of most people has grown cold, and we are being hammered with headlines about horrific acts of violence almost every single day now.

The terrorists are not just going after military and political targets. In fact, they seem to take glee in hitting us where we are most vulnerable.

Just recently, I wrote about how all the members of one particular church here in America ended up on an ISIS kill list. It appears that ISIS is collecting names from church directories and synagogue directories that they find on the Internet. So if you run a church or a synagogue you should take note of this.

Even bigger attacks than we have seen so far are coming. At some point Islamic terrorists will get their hands on chemical, biological and potentially even nuclear weapons, and they will not hesitate to use them.

Many of our politicians are promising to rid the world of these terrorists, but I don’t think that they even know what we are really dealing with or how to really fight this battle.

After a decade and a half of dropping bombs and spending trillions of dollars fighting in the Middle East, the threat of Islamic terror is worse than ever. And even nations that were never heavily involved in the “war on terror” are seeing Islamic terror rise to unprecedented levels.

The blind are leading the blind, and meanwhile the terror attacks and the mass killings are just going to continue to get even worse.

Michael Moore Explains Why Donald Trump Will Win In November – And It Actually Makes Perfect Sense

July 25, 2016July 25, 2016 by Michael

Michael Moore is a radical leftist that is trying to destroy everything that America once stood for, but for once he is making sense. In his recent article entitled “5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win“, he makes a compelling case for why Donald Trump could win the election in November. I can’t remember the last time I actually agreed with Michael Moore about something, but in this instance I do. The American people are very angry and very frustrated, and they want someone that is going to shake things up in Washington. Needless to say, that is not going to be Hillary Clinton. According to Real Clear Politics, Trump has won five of the last six major national polls, and top Democrats are starting to understand that they could actually lose to the New York billionaire.

As Michael Moore has pointed out, the key to the election may be the upper Midwest. That is why it may turn out to be very wise that Trump has picked a running mate from the region. Residents of the upper Midwest have watched NAFTA and other “free trade deals” turn their formerly booming economy into an area now known as “the rust belt”. Now that there is a major presidential candidate that is openly speaking out against these “free trade deals”, they will finally have a real opportunity to let their voices be heard. The following is from the Michael Moore article that I mentioned above…

I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest.

Since NAFTA went into effect on January 1, 1994, the United States has lost tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities and millions of good paying jobs. Once upon a time, the city of Detroit had the highest per capita income in the entire country, but now it is a rotting, decaying, crime-infested disaster zone that the rest of the world makes jokes about.

It was under Bill Clinton that NAFTA was implemented, and Bill and Hillary have long been supportive of NAFTA and other “free trade deals” that have been responsible for systematically dismantling America’s economic infrastructure. Trump has already made this a major theme of his campaign, and the voters in the rust belt states could potentially make the difference in who wins in November. Here is some additional analysis from Michael Moore…

And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November.

But there is another factor that Michael Moore has pointed out that I think we should consider as well. While most American voters take their votes very seriously, there is a small minority that will let some of the most frivolous reasons imaginable decide their votes.

Some Americans just want a good story. Others want to stick it to the establishment. Yet others just “want to see what will happen” if a certain person gets into the White House. And it seems quite likely that Donald Trump will win the “curiosity vote”, the “anger vote”, and “the twisted sense of humor vote”. Everyone pretty much knows what we will get with Hillary Clinton in the White House (and it would be horrible), but there is a great mystery as far as what Donald Trump would do as president. I happen to agree with Michael Moore that this is a factor that greatly favors Trump…

You can take as long as you need in there and no one can make you do anything. You can push the button and vote a straight party line, or you can write in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There are no rules. And because of that, and the anger that so many have toward a broken political system, millions are going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like his bigotry or ego, but just because they can. Just because it will upset the apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad. And in the same way like when you’re standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind wonders for a moment what would that feel like to go over that thing, a lot of people are going to love being in the position of puppetmaster and plunking down for Trump just to see what that might look like.

But before you get too excited about a Trump presidency, let us not forget that the electoral map tends to greatly favor Democrats. All Hillary has to do is to win all of the states that she is expected to win and add one battleground state…

Perhaps you enjoy talk of battleground states. Well, there’s a scenario for you, too. First, pick the six “closest” swing states (VA, NH, IA, OH, FL, NC). Got it? Now understand that New Hampshire excepted, Clinton only has to win one of them in order to reach the requisite 270 electoral votes to win.

It remains my contention that the establishment will do whatever they have to do to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. And now that the general election looks like it will be much closer than anticipated, we may get to see what lengths the establishment is willing to go to in order to get rid of a “problem candidate”.

Hillary Clinton is an utterly evil and extremely corrupt politician, but the establishment absolutely loves her. She would say and do just about anything to get elected, and the establishment knows that she will do their bidding.

So we shall see what happens between now and November, but personally I don’t see any way that this is going to end well…

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